Home

The Aqua B.I.G. CHALLENGE for 2017

Aqua Business, Investment & Government (Aqua B.I.G.2017) is being held in September 2017 in Hong Kong. This is the inaugural event of what we believe will be a regular ‘must attend’ activity for all involved and connected with the seafood industry.

Technology and innovation is the key to expansion. Technology transfer is crucial to assist countries which technology is lacking behind to maximize its harvest. In addition to worldwide food supply, seafood is also crucial to development of other industries such as marine renewable energy, cosmetic, health & pharmacology, environment & clean tech. The Forum & Expo will be held around the globe as a platform for ideas exchange, technological transfer, research and possible solutions to technical issues identified, and for all other related industries to better understand and maximize marine resources available.

At each Aqua B.I.G event we will focus on one BIG challenge for the industry so that we can engage key players and thinkers to concentrate their thoughts on a solution to a major issue. For our first challenge we have chosen the subject of PACKAGING.

Every year between 6 and 8 million tons of plastic finds its way into the oceans. This is not only unsightly but extremely damaging for the seafood industry. The seafood industry continues to use plastic and other unfriendly to the environment packaging seemingly blind from the damage that is being caused and it is time we looked at how we can improve this situation.

We are calling on all interested individuals, organisations, etc to get involved and share their ideas and concepts on materials, methods and concepts for elimination of the use of plastics and other ocean unfriendly materials in packaging in the seafood industry. This can be at any point in the value chain. It may be a system already in use in some location or it may be new technology, or simply an idea – if you have a solution to the problem then please share your concepts and enter the competition.

The seafood industry must care about this issue. If plastic trash were simply an aesthetic problem then possibly we might not see this as a priority. The thing is we know that a massive amount of plastic is entering the ocean each year and we know that floating microplastic is entering the food chain and this will build to be another food safety issue and be used as anti-seafood activity unless we do something about it.

For the few hundred thousand tons of microplastic floating in the ocean, we know that it is not feasible to clean up these nearly microscopic particles distributed widely across the sea surface. In the longer term, we must all rethink how we use plastics with respect to function and desired lifetime of products. In the short term we believe that the seafood industry must be THE leader in this area and ‘turn off the tap’ and prevent this waste from entering the ocean in the first place. Having identified this we aim to promote solutions and we look forward to your input and help.